Human Geography: Chapter 4

Front 1

Acculturation

Back 1

The adoption of cultural traits, such as language, by one group under the influence of another.

Front 2

Animism

Back 2

Most prevalent in African and the Americas, doctrine in which the world is seen as being infused with spiritual and even supernatural powers.

Front 3

Artifact

Back 3

Any item that represents a material aspect of culture.

Front 4

Buddhism

Back 4

System of belief that seeks to explain ultimate realities for all people--such as the nature of suffering and the path toward self-realization.

Front 5

Creole

Back 5

A pidgin language that evolves to the point at which it becomes the primary language of the people who speak it.

Front 6

Cultural copmlex

Back 6

The group of traits that define a particular culture.

Front 7

Culture

Back 7

A total way of life held in common by a group of people, including learned features such as language, ideology, behavior, technology, and government.

Front 8

Custom

Back 8

Practices followed by the people of a particular cultural group.

Front 9

Diaspora

Back 9

People who come from a common ethnic background but who live in different regions outside of the home of their ethnicity.

Front 10

Ecumene

Back 10

The proportion of the earth inhabited by humans.

Front 11

Environmental determinism

Back 11

A doctrine that claims that cultural traits are formed and controlled by environmental conditions.

Front 12

Esperanto

Back 12

A constructed international auxiliary language incorporation aspects of numerous linguistic traditions to create a universal means of communication.

Front 13

Ethnicity

Back 13

Refers to a group of people who share a common identity.

Front 14

Folk culture

Back 14

Refers to a constellation of cultural practices that form the sights, smell,s sounds, and rituals of everyday existence in the traditional societies in which they developed.

Front 15

Fundamentalism

Back 15

The strict adherence to a particular doctrine.

Front 16

Indo-European family

Back 16

Language family including the Germanic and Romance languages that is spoken by about 50% of the world's people.

Front 17

Isoglosses

Back 17

Geographical boundary lines where different linguistic features meet.

Front 18

Judaism

Back 18

The first major monotheistic religion. It is based on a sense of ethnic identity, and its adherents tend to form tight-knit communities where they live.

Front 19

Language family

Back 19

A collection of many languages, all of which came form the same original tongue long ago, that have since evolved different characteristics.

Front 20

Language group

Back 20

A set of languages with a relatively recent common origin and many similar characteristics.

Front 21

Lingua franca

Back 21

An extremely simple language that combines aspects of two or more other, more-complex languages usually used for quick and efficient communication.

Front 22

Pidgin

Back 22

Language that may develop when two groups of people with different languages meet. Has some characteristics of each language.

Front 23

Pilgrimage

Back 23

A journey to a place of religious importance.

Front 24

Polyglot

Back 24

A multilingual state.

Front 25

Pop culture (or popular culture)

Back 25

Dynamic culture based in large, heterogeneous societies permitting considerable individualism, innovation, and change; having a money-based economy, division of labor into professions, secular institutions of control, and weak interpersonal ties; and producing and consuming machine-made goods.

Front 26

Race

Back 26

A group of human beings distinguished by physical traits, blood types, genetic code patterns or genetically inherited characteristics.

Front 27

Romance languages

Back 27

Any of the languages derived from Latin including Italian, Spanish, French, and Romanian.

Front 28

Shaman

Back 28

The single person who takes on the roles of priest, counselor, and physician and acts as a conduit to the supernatural world in a shamanist culture.

Front 29

Sino-Tibetan family

Back 29

Language area that spreads through most of Southeast Asia and China and is comprised of Chinese, Burmese, Tibetan, Japanese, and Korean.

Front 30

Syncretic

Back 30

Traditions that borrow from both the past and present.

Front 31

Toponym

Back 31

Place names given to certain features on the land such as settlements, terrain features, and streams.

Front 32

Tradition

Back 32

A cohesive collection of customs within a cultural group.

Front 33

Transculturation

Back 33

The expansion of cultural traits through diffusion, adoption, and other related processes.

Front 34

Possibilism

Back 34

The notion that humans are the primary architects of culture and yet are limited somewhat by their environmental surroundings; a dominant paradigm in the field.